HELL AND BACK
On Wednesday, Deron Williams — the man the Nets paid $27.5 million to go away — makes his return to Brooklyn, the place he says made him so miserable he considered quitting basketball.
Nets coach Lionel Hollins had said he knew Williams would play better as soon as he got out of New York, intimating Williams wasn’t cut out for this city. In an interview with Yahoo, Williams — now in Dallas — acknowledged as much.
“It took a lot out of me, man, those three years, some of the hardest in my life. Made me question if I even wanted to play basket ball when I was done with that contract,’’ Williams said, adding later, “It’s cool. There’s a lot of people, I guess, who aren’t built for New York. New York is not for everybody.”
It most clearly was not for Williams, who was either hurt or pouting or both through much of his stay with the Nets. He seems healthier and happier in Dallas, averaging 15 points and nearly six assists and starting at the point for a Mavericks team that was 1512 going into Tuesday night’s tilt in Toronto.
Williams dealt with just a modicum of the fan pressure in Brooklyn he would have across town in the Garden, but Dallas owner Mark Cuban admitted Tuesday to CBSSports that he expects his point guard to get booed in his return to Barclays Center.
“Probably will,’’ Cuban said. “But it’s better than when I went back after we traded for JKidd, and the whole place was going, ‘Thank you, Cuban,’ and Devin [Harris] went off for 43 points. We got crushed. We got crushed, and they’re all going, ‘Thank-YOU CubAN! ’”
Williams already had a reputation for being tough to coach long before he ever got to the Nets, then in New Jersey. Just ask Jerry Sloan, who resigned after 23 seasons in Utah following a dispute with the point guard. But once he got to the Nets, he went through Avery Johnson, P.J. Carlesimo, Jason Kidd and finally Hollins, who will coach against Williams on Wednesday. “It really doesn’t matter,’’ Hollins said Monday when asked about Williams’ return. “I’m not against the kid, I’m for the kid. I’m happy for him, but I don’t want him to play well on Wednesday.’’
Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov was deadset on making Williams the face of the franchise and the centerpiece of a champion. They coughed up firstround picks and mortgaged their future to put Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce around him, and Prokhorov willingly paid the hefty luxury tax.
The Russian billionaire never got a return on that investment and eventually cut his losses, buying out Williams and his gimpy ankles last July.
“I wanted to be somewhere where my coach was going to be there. It wasn’t going to be up in the air year after year. You see here, [Rick Carlisle is] not going anywhere,” Williams said. “I’ve heard a lot of great things about him as a coach, and that was a big part of it. The system has definitely been great. Still learning, but it’s definitely helped me, helped my confidence.”
Of course, one might say had Williams played up to the standards of a franchise player who’d been given a fiveyear, $99 million contract extension in 2012, the Nets’ coaching situation might not have looked like a game of musical chairs. But he didn’t, so it did.
Anybody who has watched Williams this season can see how much happier he is in his home state of Texas — playing around and joking in the locker room, smiling on the court, even more media friendly.
As he said, New York isn’t for everybody.